On Anna’s right the old archbishop and Flemmynge ignored her, immersed as they were in their own discussions.
Apparently they found the entertainment lacking.
“What do you expect from a professed Lollard, except dullness,” the younger cleric said as he dusted crumbs from the breast of his ornate tunic. His full sleeves had sopped enough dripping from his trencher to grease a griddle.
He made no effort to lower his voice, trusting perhaps to the cover of the noise in the great hall, or thinking that Anna’s opinion of their discourse was so insignificant that it did not matter if she heard.
“Not even a lord of misrule, or a lone jongleur. Not even a strolling musician.”
The archbishop grunted. “If ’twere a strolling troubadour, he’d like as not be playing Lollard hymns. But don’t make the mistake of thinking Sir John dull. He’s shrewd enough to know his enemies. He only invited me because I saw him at the hunt at Colcut Manor last week and pressed him for an invitation.”
Flemmynge gave a knowing grin and nodded. “Since I met him at Rochester Abbey, my invitation was likewise obligatory.”
“Well, between the pair of us we’ve frighted off our prey. Cobham will have no Lollard preachers here. Sir John is not that bold. Odd that the abbess is not in attendance with her benefactor.”
“I’m told she never leaves the abbey.”
“A contemplative?”
“No. Not as such. The abbey is an enclosure of scribes. She seems to have some sort of affliction that keeps her from going about in company. I’ve only seen her once—”
He lowered his voice, actually glancing in Anna’s direction. She nibbled at the bite of blancmange, feigning disinterest in their conversation.
“She wears a thin black veil over her headdress and wimple that completely hides her face.”
They were talking about the woman whom Anna would call “mother.” Her mind pulled into itself until the voices receded to meaningless chatter. She felt keenly her social isolation on the dais and wondered if she would ever again find that sense of belonging she’d had as a child. She looked out over the crowd at the grand ladies seated with their noble husbands. She felt no kinship with them either, except for perhaps the one or two who were clearly with child beneath the layers of satin and velvet and fur that covered their swollen bellies.
When would she begin to show? A quiver of anticipation crawled up her spine at the thought of it. How could she feel this little thrill, this guilty pleasure, whenever she thought of the tiny child growing inside of her? Whenever her mind conjured the image of her boy child—for she could not think of the child growing inside her as other than male—it was a blond boy child with VanCleve’s intelligent eyes and wide brow that she saw. And she loved him already. Loved him as she had loved his father. Loved him as she still loved his father, for she knew that if VanCleve could have come back to her he would have.
Not for the first time she wondered if he might be dead, or if some ill fortune had overtaken him. Or possibly even grief at the loss he mentioned in his last letter. She didn’t want to think that he might have another life or even a wife in Flanders, though it had crossed her mind more than once. No, she would not believe that. He had loved her. Of that she was sure. That was why she’d left a note with the little innkeeper telling him where she was.
Would she have waited if she had known about the child? No. It was better that she was here. She had promised her grandfather she would come to England. She could not wait for a man who might never return.
“Sir John’s trying to influence the throne through Beaufort,” Flemmynge said on her right.
“ ’Twill do him no good. Beaufort will never be chancellor.”
“But he’s the prince’s favorite.”
“No matter. A bastard will never wear the great seal of England as long as I am archbishop! Not even John of Gaunt’s bastard.”
The word “bastard” intruded abruptly.
But her son would never be called “bastard.” The world would think, even the child would think, his father dead—and she would tell him how his father, Martin, a scholar at the university, died defending the true faith.
The weight of the anticipation of so much lying lay against her heart, as leaden as the too large meal she’d just consumed.
The carver came and removed the used trencher, replacing it with a fresh one. But Anna had lost her appetite for whatever followed. Not just her stomach, but her bladder, as well, felt overfull. She was just about to ask Lady Joan if she could be excused when her ladyship tapped Anna on the shoulder.
“You are probably needing some relief from too great a crowd of men. I know I am,” she said, and taking Anna by the hand, led her down from the dais toward one of the three arched entrances to the hall. They paused briefly at the knights’ table while Lady Joan made pleasant inquiries regarding their guests’ health. “My lady, you look well. My lord, how nice to see you. Did you find the viands to your liking?”
The pressure in Anna’s bladder grew as the courtesies were exchanged, and she tried to make appropriate responses to each introduction, aware that all in turn were making their own assessments of her importance, her place in the noble household, how much courtesy they should show her. Anna would have told them bluntly, had they been bold enough to ask with their tongues and not their eyes, that she had no place in this noble household.
Lady Joan moved on to the clerics’ board. Lesser churchmen, not noble born. Here there were several empty seats. Lollards whom Lady Joan had said were warned away when the archbishop invited himself.
“Prior Timothy.” Lady Joan turned her attention to a tall thin man of severe demeanor. “I had hoped to see Brother Gabriel. I wanted to introduce him to my ward.”
This Brother Gabriel must be in sympathy with the Lollard movement, Anna thought idly, thinking how she wished they would hurry lest her bladder burst.
“He’s the father confessor at the abbey, a friar and a pardoner,” Lady Joan explained to her. “One with papal approval. A favored position indeed. I thought you might like to meet him outside the confessional.” Then she offered that enigmatic little half-smile, her mouth twitching like a cat’s.
No Lollard sympathizer then. A pardoner! One of Rome’s sanctioned predators. She’d not be likely to meet him in the confessional either. But Lady Joan knew that. It was her way of mocking both pardoner and prior without giving obvious insult.
Her irony was, of course, lost on the prior. “Brother Gabriel was taken ill. Shortly after the feast commenced. It was just as you were approaching the dais in procession. Most unusual. He turned quite pale, then murmured something about feeling ill and bolted for the door. When he didn’t return I went after him, but he was nowhere in sight.”
“Probably just a touch of the ague. I’ll send an inquiry to the abbey tomorrow.”
But Anna hardly heard this last. She was already through the archway and headed for the first-floor garderobe that served the great hall.
TWENTY-NINE
Though you have pocketfuls of pardons … Though
you be found in the fraternity of all the four orders.
Though you have double indulgences … I set your
patents and your pardons at the worth of a peascod!
—WILLIAM LANGLAND IN
PIERS PLOWMAN’S PROTEST (14TH century)
The abbess had grown so accustomed to viewing faces through her thin black veil that all humankind bore to her a striking similarity in coloring and complexion. But even seen through the fine webbing of her veil, there was something different about the young woman standing in front of her desk.
“Abbess, I have brought you a gift.” Sir John put his hand across the shoulders of the girl and gently drew her forward. “This is Anna Bookman. She came from Prague, where she worked with her husband, who was martyred for the same cause we serve. And she has bravely made her way to us seeking refuge and employment.”
It was the hair. That was wh
at was different. Almost without thinking, the abbess lifted her veil to get a better look at the young woman. She had only known one other with hair like that. The abbess stood up to acknowledge the introduction. The girl was as tall as she. They stood eye to eye with only the desk separating them. The abbess fingered the quill in her scarred left hand to keep it from reaching up of its own volition to stroke the copper-colored curls. A bit of lace merely threatened their confinement. The girl reached up and straightened the kerchief in a reflexive movement.
“Refuge, certainly,” the abbess said. “And welcome, but how employment in the company of nuns who do everything for themselves, including the meanest chores?”
The girl’s blue-eyed gaze remained open and unwavering, with the merest flicker of astonishment when the abbess lifted the veil to reveal her scarred face. She did not turn away self-consciously, as others did on those rare occasions when Kathryn lifted her veil. Even Sir John looked at some fixed point over her shoulder as he spoke. To alleviate his discomfort, she lowered her veil. Sir John’s gaze returned to her face.
“Anna is a fine scribe. She copied the Scriptures with her husband. She can translate the Latin into both English and Czech. She worked with the followers of Jan Hus at the university in Prague.”
The abbess had heard of Hus. She knew that Lollardy had swelled to a great force in Bohemia under his leadership and fiery preaching. She knew too that Prague was the ultimate destination for many of the English copies of Wycliffe’s teachings that the abbey produced. If indeed the girl could translate directly into Czech, here would be a step removed. A godsend indeed.
“Is she aware of the danger?” It did not occur to the abbess that the girl might be a spy. She had that much faith in Sir John. “Is she aware that such transcriptions are illegal and carry the harshest punishments?”
“She is well aware. Her husband died because of it and she was put out of her home. She has endured much hardship just to get here. It was her husband’s last instruction to her.”
The girl’s eyes wavered. She glanced down, appeared to be studying her hands, made anxious no doubt by the memory of it.
“Is this true, Mistress Bookman?”
“Yes.” She breathed deeply and looked up. “It is true. I am a scribe, and I will willingly translate the Scriptures for you. It is also true that I share your belief that the Holy Word of God should be available to all who can read it in their own tongue.” The girl’s eyes were a startling shade of blue.
“Well, then, Mistress Bookman, you are indeed welcome and—”
“Please call me Anna.”
“And you may call me ‘Mother.’”
The girl swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes … Mother.” She hardly said it above a whisper, then added, “Thank you for taking us in.”
“Us?”
Sir John cleared his throat. “There is something else. There is another, a boy. He is afflicted. But if the abbey cannot accommodate him, we can …”
“How old is the boy?” She addressed this to the young woman.
“He may be as young as six or as old as eight years. I don’t know for sure. He was abandoned because of his affliction.” Anna tugged again on the bit of lace, tucked a curl inside it.
“And you care for him alone?”
“Yes … Mother … There was another, but she is dead.”
“Then here you will have help, and he will find others among the sisters who will love him.”
For the first time since the interview began, the lines in the girl’s face relaxed, though the abbess noticed her shoulders remained rigid.
“There is something else,” she said. “There is to be another.”
“Another?”
The girl put her arm over her belly in a shielding movement.
“Oh. I see,” the abbess said.
“It happened before … before Martin was killed.”
The abbess looked at Sir John, whose gaze seemed once again fixed on some fascinating spot on the wall behind her. His face was bright red.
“Well, Sir John. It would seem that you have brought us not one but three gifts this day. You may leave Anna with me where we will see her settled in this very night. And after we have had a chance to get to know each other— by tomorrow, I think, will be enough time—you can bring the boy to us. If that is convenient, of course.”
Sir John smiled broadly, his third chin paling to a faint pink.
“It will be convenient. Young Bek and I will attend you tomorrow. I left him playing with a tin whistle, as happy as a pig in mud.” Then he gave a courtly bow and turned on his heel.
“I think Sir John is glad to be rid of this women’s talk.” The abbess laughed. “Now sit. I’ll ring for refreshment, and you and I can become acquainted. Then I’ll see you settled into your quarters. I’m afraid the guesthouse is taken with a sometime-resident cleric, but there are two rooms behind the refectorium, small but bigger than the nuns’ cells. They will accommodate you and your children comfortably.”
From the chapel tower, a bell tolled monotonously. “That is the call to prayer. The sisters will be occupied. I’ll fetch some bread and butter and warm cider for us myself. You just rest.”
When she returned shortly with a crockery pitcher, the girl’s head was thrown back against the high-backed chair. Her eyes were closed and the smallest snore indicated the even rhythm of her breathing. She had removed the kerchief and still clutched it in her hand. Her bright hair spilled down her shoulders, but it was the way one curl drifted across her high forehead that made Kathryn’s heart clutch. Strange how one thing, the smallest thing, like the color of a person’s hair, could evoke an old memory from a life forgotten. You are a foolish, sentimental old woman, she scolded herself. Still, she reached up and swept the curl away from the girl’s closed eyelid.
A coal shifted in the small grate that warmed the mother superior’s office, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. The girl never even broke her rhythm of breathing. The abbess remembered, though it was so long ago it was almost as though it had happened to another, the fatigue that had stalked her during her own pregnancy. She had been about the same age as this girl—late for a first child—when she’d borne her twin sons. Sighing, Kathryn covered the girl with the woolen shawl draped over her own chair and lit the tallow drip on her desk. Who knew how long Anna would sleep?
She picked up her pen. She could at least copy a few lines before the daylight faded altogether. Something about the sleeping girl made the creeping evening shadows seem less lonely. She felt an unexplainable lightness in her soul.
Anna felt at home in the snug confines of her abbey rooms. The next day, Sir John brought Bek, as promised, and the two of them fit quite comfortably beside their own small hearth. The day after that, a cold rain settled in, sealing the abbey into its own little gray world.
Nights, Anna slept well, lulled by the rain dripping from the eaves, and each day she ate ravenously from the abbey kitchen’s simple but nourishing food: heavy soups made with boiled barley and marrow bone and root vegetables, too dried and shriveled to eat any other way, and always accompanied by plenty of fresh bread and cream from the small herd of milk cows the sisters tended.
In the scriptorium Anna was assigned a desk with two inkwells, one for red and one for iron gall black—these were always miraculously filled each morning—and a high stool next to a kindly older nun named Sister Matilde. The sixteen scribes sat four abreast, separated by an aisle running down a long rectangular room and then crossed by another aisle. Their desks were positioned deliberately, Anna supposed, far enough apart to stop gossip, and given the nature of the abbey’s work, far enough apart also to deter wandering eyes. Anna’s desk was the last one, next to the west window to gain the late light. Sister Matilde’s desk abutted the aisle. Anna noticed that several of the desks were empty. The abbess had explained that many of the scribes did kitchen and garden duty also. But Anna noticed that her desk and Sister Matilde’s desk, along with four or
five others, were rarely empty.
“We must be discreet, dear,” Sister Matilde had said, handing Anna a half-copied bifolium, a folded sheet of calfskin making two pages. Several of these bifolia would make a quire; several quires could be sewn together to make a book. This bifolium was a poem by Christine de Pisan to place on top of her real work whenever visitors entered the scriptorium. On the stand above her desk, which held the slim text of John Wycliffe’s sermons that she was copying and translating into the Czech language, was also a book by Christine de Pisan.
Sister Matilde pantomimed for her, sliding one sheet behind the other, as she said, “Even some of the sisters are unaware of everything we copy.” She nodded meaningfully toward the other end of the scriptorium, where a large nun with a scowling expression watched.
But Anna did not have to do her sleight-of-hand tricks that week. Sister Agatha did not stop by her desk to chatter with the newest scribe, though she cast a few inquisitive and baleful glances in Anna’s direction whenever she sailed her wide hips down the aisle.
No visitors came to the abbey. The winter rains and fog kept travelers close to their own hearths. Anna’s days were spent doing the work she loved. Even Bek had found a vocation of his own. He tolerated the gentler clang of the chapel bells calling the sisters to prayer and trailed to chapel eagerly after them. They chanted the Divine Office accompanied by the high, thin notes of his little tin whistle. At first the sisters had ignored him, then tolerated him, finally accepting him into their world. Some acknowledged him with a wink and a smile whenever they passed the cushion at the foot of Anna’s stool, where he sat practicing his music. Sister Matilde had assured Anna she didn’t mind his playing, and Anna was glad. His soft breath made the whistle notes light and fluid, like the wind chimes made from cockleshells that Anna remembered from her little courtyard in Prague.
The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5) Page 31
